Pandy woke up the next morning dramatically hung over. Her contact lenses were glued to her eyeballs; she had to feel around for the saline solution and pour half the bottle into her eyes before she could see. Once she could, she was relieved to discover that the bedding, including the duvet and the six down pillows, was mostly untouched. At first she was annoyed—apparently no one had been interested in her enough to at least try to get her into bed. Then a freight train came roaring into the tunnel that was her head.
When the train passed, she shook her head and heard music softly wafting up the stairs. The buzzer rang, and a voice called out, “Who ordered the poached eggs?”
Grabbing a robe from the bathroom, Pandy proceeded cautiously down the stairs.
“There you are,” SondraBeth said, coming out of the kitchen. “Your poached eggs have arrived. I guess you must have ordered them last night.”
Pandy stared at her blankly, unable to process what she was seeing. SondraBeth was wearing one of her dresses, which was incomprehensible, as she had to be at least two sizes larger than Pandy. Nevertheless, she’d somehow managed to squeeze herself into Pandy’s best dress, a one-of-a-kind piece that Pandy had bought at an exclusive sample sale to which only ten women had been invited. The seams under the arms were straining against the silk fabric in an effort to contain SondraBeth’s breasts.
“Hope you don’t mind,” SondraBeth said, giving Pandy a brilliant smile. “I crashed in the second bedroom. Didn’t want to drive. That was one helluva party, sista.”
“Yes, it certainly was,” Pandy said carefully, eyeing her dress.
“Want some coffee?” SondraBeth raised her arm to remove a mug from an upper shelf. Terrified the seam would rip, Pandy quickly brushed past her to grab the cup.
SondraBeth poured out coffee, and then, barely able to contain her excitement, motioned Pandy into the front room. “Want to see something crazy?” she asked, pointing at the fuzzy caterpillar couch. “Look at that.”
Pandy immediately forgot all about her dress.
Lying facedown was a youngish man, tanned and shirtless, a flop of dark brown hair with blond roots brushing his shoulder. Pandy inhaled sharply.
“Doug Stone.” SondraBeth giggled. “Now there’s a guy who really knows how to live up to his name. On the other hand, he’s gorgeous, so who cares?”
Pandy took a step closer. “He’s so gorgeous, I can barely stand to look at him.” She sighed longingly.
SondraBeth cocked her head in surprise. “You certainly looked at him plenty last night.”
“I did?”
“You were making out with him. For, like, an hour. Don’t you remember?”
Pandy thought back through the hazy snippets she could recall. “No.”
“How could you forget a thing like that?” SondraBeth scolded. “In any case, I wouldn’t get too upset about it. He probably doesn’t remember, either.”
“Thanks a lot,” Pandy groaned. She took another look at Doug Stone and scratched her ear. “Do you think room service knows how to remove a body?”
SondraBeth laughed. “I’d try housekeeping instead.”
The next day, SondraBeth auditioned for the part of Monica in front of several people from the studio, including PP and Roger.
Pandy didn’t go. She was nervous for SondraBeth, but mostly, she was embarrassed. During the full day it had taken her to recover, Pandy realized that no doubt everyone else would turn out to be right, and SondraBeth wouldn’t be able to act at all. And then PP would be annoyed with her for wasting his time, and SondraBeth would be devastated. Pandy would have to deal with that startled, hopeless, beaten-down expression she saw on the faces of all the actresses who’d auditioned and knew they weren’t getting the part. Pandy would have to walk SondraBeth to the door, where they would say their goodbyes and never see each other again.
And that would be that. Recovering from the party and its aftermath—four hours of housekeeping’s cleaning the room, Doug Stone’s insistence on staying for breakfast and ordering enough room service for three people, SondraBeth asking if she could borrow Pandy’s dress for the audition, and Pandy having to come up with an excuse as to why she couldn’t—had left her feeling slightly unhinged. As if she’d inadvertently stumbled onto the set of someone else’s porn movie.
But maybe that was just an excuse for her own nerves.
At three o’clock, her phone bleated. It was Roger calling to let her know that SondraBeth had aced the audition, and that PP himself would be calling shortly. “She did great,” Roger informed her. “She was Monica—or rather, PJ Wallis. It was uncanny. She was exactly like you.”
Two long minutes passed before the phone rang again.
“PP for PJ Wallis, please,” the hushed girl-woman voice said as PP himself came on the line.
“Congratulations,” he said briskly, as if he barely had time for the call. “I’ll see you and SondraBeth tomorrow for lunch. Jessica,” he added to his assistant, “make the arrangements.”
Pandy hung up and sank to her knees in triumph.
She had won.
She and SondraBeth had a stiff, civilized lunch with PP on the terrace under the pink-and-white striped awnings at the Hotel Bel-Air. Pandy admired the swans, and everyone behaved like adults. Pandy limited herself to one glass of champagne, and SondraBeth didn’t drink at all.
One month later, when SondraBeth Schnowzer moved to New York City, Pandy welcomed her real, live Monica with open arms.
CHAPTER FIVE
THAT FIRST summer, Pandy and SondraBeth were inseparable. Monica was in preproduction, and Pandy was consulted on locations and costumes and a variety of surprising details she’d never considered—but mostly she was tasked with instructing SondraBeth in the ways of becoming herself, and therefore Monica.
And so the transformation began: SondraBeth’s hair was colored to match Pandy’s by the very same stylist who did Pandy’s hair; she was given replicas of Pandy’s jewelry; she was even instructed to buy the exact same shoes that Pandy wore, in order to learn how to walk in them.
And because pink champagne was Pandy’s, and therefore Monica’s, favorite drink, it had to become SondraBeth’s as well. Along with Pandy’s social life. And so wherever Pandy went, SondraBeth went, too. This meant going to Joules almost every night, and to basically every other kind of social event imaginable, including the Polo in Bridgehampton, where SondraBeth eagerly stomped the divots and acquired a bevy of handsome new polo-player friends.
In general, SondraBeth was wonderfully game. She’d call Pandy into her room to solicit her opinion on what to wear, and would listen with great interest to Pandy’s precise briefings on who would be at what event and how they fit into the social strata, as if they were colored data points on a graph.
Unlike Pandy herself, however, back then, SondraBeth never wanted to stay Monica for long.
“I’m a country girl,” she’d say, scrubbing off her makeup with soap and changing into the loose, baggy clothing she favored when she didn’t have to be “on.” “I grew up helping the vet pull calves out of some cow’s butt. I’ve seen it all, sista, and let me tell you, it’s not all pretty.” And then she’d give Pandy a shit-eating grin, and in a voice reminiscent of Glinda the Good Witch in The Wizard of Oz, she would add, “Not like here. Not like in Monica Land.”
Pandy had to laugh. SondraBeth wasn’t far wrong—and instead of the yellow brick road, they had miles of sidewalks, filled with glittering displays of the most glamorous life New York City had to offer.